“Anna would kill you both,” Max interjected.
Percy laughed. “Indeed, as lovely as the idea is, she has waited long enough for a wedding day. I could not make her share it.” He offered Norman an apologetic look. “But it will be pleasant for us both to share in your wedding day with you, and for you to share in ours.”
“Listen to us all,” Dickie said, putting his arms around Max and Percy’s shoulders. “Who would have thought this day would come, eh? We used to talk about hunting and shooting and riding and how we might escape our wives when we were married, but now… I think you are truly enmeshed in this family, Percy.”
Max nodded. “You have always been one of us, but now you will be bound to us by law and by blood. A true brother.” He glanced at Norman. “You too, of course.”
A lump formed in Percy’s throat as he looked down the line at Max, Dickie, and Norman. All he had ever wanted was a family who cared for him, a family where he belonged, and in one summer, he had gained everything he had ever dreamed of and so much more. Including the one thing he had neverdaredto dream of—a love like that of his mother and father. A love that wouldnotbe forgotten about.
Anna was his family now, and in a moment of contented silence, he vowed to nurture their love for the rest of his days, tending to it like the precious, miraculous gift that it was. Like an orchid planted in a long-ago garden, a beautiful, lasting legacy for the generations to come.
EPILOGUE
One Month Later…
“You know, you might have warned me,” Anna said, shielding her face from the sun as she stretched out on the picnic blanket beside her friends. It was an engagement party of sorts, at her childhood home of Greenfield House, though it felt rather more like an ordinary, wonderful gathering of her best friends.
Matilda raised a mischievous eyebrow. “About what, exactly? Do you require the manuscript of my new book? Someone might as well read it, as even Beatrice fears it is too scandalous to ever reach the bookshops. Although, I still maintain it is a book ofscience. Of biology. Of anatomy. It is not something we should be shy about, when it is?—”
“About weddings!” Anna hastened to interrupt, blushing furiously.
Ever since she had announced her engagement to her dearest friends, Matilda had been finding every opportunity to try and get her to read her newest manuscript. She had conceded a fortnight ago and been given two pages. Those two pages were more than enough for her, remembering the details making her blush twice as hard.
“You did not warn me that weddings could be so stressful,” she added.
Caroline sat up, resting her parasol on her shoulder. “Are they? I have always thought it must be so lovely to plan one’s wedding. I have been planning mine since I was perhaps eight or so. When I finally find a suitable gentleman, I fear I shall have to wage a war of compromise with my mother, for she has an abundance of ideas and all of them to do with lace and freesias.”
“I want something… quiet,” Phoebe’s sister, Ellen, said from her position next to Caroline. “Something more akin to this. An informal sort of thing with those I cherish the most.”
Caroline nodded eagerly. “Oh, thatdoessound pleasant. Does it not, Joanna?”
“It truly does.” Ellen’s twin, Joanna, sighed with a smile. “There is nothing so marvelous as an intimate garden party, where the gentlemen are elsewhere.”
The three young women had become a rather sweet subsidiary of the Spinsters’ Club, spending as much time with one another as calendars and other engagements and distance allowed. It forever warmed Anna’s heart to see them becoming their own sisterhood, as close and dedicated now as Anna and her four beloved friends had once been.
Of course, Anna and her friends were still close, and as sisters to one another, but there was no denying that the intertwined friendships had changed somewhat. It was inevitable, forever evolving but forever the foundation of who they were and what they had become. There was beauty in that—a beauty that Anna could now see clearly, as she too prepared to become part of the Wives’ Club and, perhaps one day, the Mothers’ Club.
“Name your task, dearest Anna, and I shall see it done,” Phoebe vowed, picking a strawberry from a bowl and biting into it.
Olivia nodded. “I am entirely at your disposal. Phoebe and I were saying, just the other day, that we should offer our services.”
“As long as you do not mind three wildlings running around, I am also at your disposal,” Leah said eagerly. “Indeed, I would relish the opportunity to help. I have been waiting for your letter, asking us all to gather to get preparations underway, but it has not yet arrived.”
Anna gazed at them in astonishment. “I… thought you would all be too busy.”
“Heavens, no!” Phoebe cried. “We have been waiting desperately for this day for eight years—more, I suppose. We are your servants, to ensure that you do not have to worry about anything in the approach to this wedding.”
Anna flushed with heat. “Truly?”
“Of course!” Olivia agreed. “We all know you will be nervous enough on your wedding day, fearing the worst, and that is why we are determined to lift any additional worry or weight from your shoulders.”
“Not that there will be anythingtofear,” Matilda cut in. “You know I have never been particularly soft of heart, but I have not seen any gentleman more besotted with a lady than Percival is with you. I am including Albion in that.”
Leah chuckled. “I have to agree. Nathaniel loves me with all his heart, and I adore him with all of mine, but your love is the kind they write about.”
“My goodness, when you told us of how he confessed.” Olivia feigned a swoon. “I about died, and I was more than a little envious.”
Phoebe swallowed her strawberry. “Who would expect anything less from The Matchmaker?” She winked. “Face it, dearest Anna, you found the most extraordinary love. You have beaten us all, and we adore you so much that we cannot even be annoyed about it.”
